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DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE 



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OF 



POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 



IN THE TERRITORIES 



ITS 



COUNTERPART 



BY A MISSOUKIAK 




* 3H\^> 



ST. LOUIS: 

PRINTED BY R. V. KENNEDY &CQMPANY 

OFFICE OF THE CITY DIRECTORY. 

1860. 






TO THE 

HON. FRANCIS P. BLAIR, JR., 

THIS PAPER IS SUBMITTED, 

In respect to the thoughtfulness and resolve with which he 
has received and advocated the views and plan of Mr. Jeffer- 
son, on the subject of Negro Colonization — a question of 
importance to the white and black races in the Union, involving 
material interests of the highest order to the one, and of 
humanity to the other; and which, from the very fact of its 
pure and unmixed usefulness, elicits the usual opposition that 
arises and confronts the benefit of the people. 




MR. DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE 

OF 

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 

IN TILE TERRITORIES; 

ITS 

BY A MISSOURIAN. 



The views of Mr. Douglas, in elucidation of the principle 
of Popular Sovereignty, are given in the September number 
of Harper's Magazine ; the article is elaborate, and contains all 
the facts and reasoning that can probably be advanced in its 
support. We may safely rely, that upon this exposition the 
Senator places himself in defence of his doctrine of "Squatter 
Sovereignty." If the basis be substantial, in conformity with 
the faithful interpretation of Constitutional provision, Mr. 
Douglas has done eminent service to the Nation, for which he 
should be well remembered — if, on the other hand, facts are 
strained and disjointed, and a perverted, nay, corrupt interpreta- 
tion of Constitutional Law is manifest therein, upon analysis, the 
necessary result follows, of disappointment commensurate with 
the design, and the loss of faith in the opinion of the people — 
the most fatal blight in our country to the prospects of a public 
man. 

The importance of a political subject is usually considered 
a just ground for amplification in its treatment. Mr. Douglas' 
treatise has the merit of extensive research. Yet take away the 
magnitude of the matter, and the facts bearing upon it are few, 
and the reasoning manifest; the Senator, however, having 
concluded otherwise, has treated the subject with a large array 



of statement, the application of which is more than ambiguous . 
I do not deny, but am pleased to acknowledge, that the gentle - 
man has evinced varied tact and wariness in his arrangemen t. 
He states the position of the Republican Party on the Consti- 
tutional power of Congress overthe Territories, and of the right 
and duty of Congress, in the exercise of that power, to prohibit, 
among other things, slavery therein, in the language of their 
Convention; he places the doctrine of the National Democracy in 
the line of irreconcilable opposition thereto, but admits it would 
beuncandid to deny that there are radical differences of opinion 
in that party, respecting the powers and duties of Congress, 
and the rights and immunities of the people of the Territories 
under the Federal Constitution, (on the subject of Slavery.) 
He then divides the National Democracy into three segments, 
upon the proper construction of the constitutional provision 
touching the powers of Congress over Slavery in the 
Territories ; and after ignoring the interpretation of two of 
them, he declares himself, as usual, in favor of the following, 
as the Constitutional doctrine : 

First: Those who believe that the Constitution of the 
United States neither establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the 
States or Territories beyond the power of the people legally to 
control it, but 'leaves the people thereof perfectly free to form 
and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, 
subject only to the Constitution of the United States.' 

Having given his reasoning in antagonism to the interpreta- 
tion that the Constitution establishes Slavery in the Territories, 
to be vindicated as some of the National Democracy contend, 
either by the Territorial Legislature, or, in lack thereof, by 
Congress, or by the Judiciary, by virtue of Constitutional 
authority, and independent of any Legislative action whatever, 
as by some leaders of the Democracy is proclaimed, Mr. 
Douglas settles down to an array of facts and reasoning in 
support of his construction of the Constitution. Such is the 
plan of the treatise ; he states and opposes the the conven- 
tional views of the Republican party — he wipes away the ultra 
interpretation of those of the Democracy who maintain that 
the Constitution creates Slavery in the Territories, either by 
subordinate Legislation, or, propria vigore ; and concludes that 
the people of a Territory, and no other authority, have, under 
the Constitution, the right to regulate the question. Such is 
the system of his address, plain enough when analysed and 
stripped of various excrescences that profusely surround it. 

From this it appears that any one who differs with Mr. 
Douglas need have no care of defending, except incidentally, 



the Republican Doctrine — that Doctrine is now the assailant, 
and Mr. Douglas is on the defense. Having defeated, as he 
deems, the interpretation of the Republican Party in Congress 
by the Compromise Acts of 1850-54, he sits entrenched within 
the fortress of a Legislative section and invites attack. The 
proper course then is to simplify proceedings — omitting, except 
of necessity, any vindication of the interpretation by the 
Republican party, of the Constitutional right of Congress over 
the question of Slavery in the Territories, and much more, 
neglecting altogether the intemperate views of that portion of 
his own party, which Mr. Douglas himself proclaims unsound, 
let us analyze the facta and reasoning of the Senator, and award 
him the result of impartial justice. 

One difficulty, however, presents itself at the outset, which 
ought not to exist — the language of Mr. Douglas' proposition 
is informal and obscure — nay, it is worse, but I prefer moderation ; 
in grave proceedings, however, of momentous import, this is 
unpardonable; and yet, if we rectify the language of the 
Senator, what will become of his reasoning ? Read his first 
classification as above, and insert between the words "but" 
and "leaves", to make the sentence sense, the words "that it" 
(viz : the Constitution of the United States,) and the Senator 
has made a rich bequest to the Nation, in the following 
unparalleled conclusion of his proposition: "First: Those 
who believe that the Constitution of the United States neither 
establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the States or Territories 
beyond the power of the people legally to control it, but (that 
it, the Constitution of the United States,) leaves the people 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution 
of the United States." Such is the written wisdom of Senator 
Douglas, and to so ripe a conclusion does he lead his readers. 
I know the force of early education, and I can pardon its 
dialectics. Here, in the West, the Creole expression, " cul de 
sac" has been applied to a section of country once so entangled 
that he who was unlucky enough to enter it, could not find his 
way out ; and if the Constitution of the United States, accord- 
ing to Mr. Douglas' parlance, is so liberal as to give the people 
of a Territory perfect freedom to form and regulate the domestic 
institution of Slavery in their own way, subject only to the 
restrictions contained in that Constitution, I cannot see how 
the gentleman escapes the position of the western wight who 
first found himself in "the bottom of the hag." If the true con- 
struction of the Constitution be, that the people of a Territory 
have nothing to say on the subject, except by authority of 



6 

Congress, through their Territorial Legislature, what is the 
amount of this gift of perfect freedom so loudly harped upon? 

But even the first part of his proposition is peculiar, and, I 
fear, places the Senator in a worse dilemma. It would be strange 
if the true interpretation of it cancelled his petted theory. 
Mr. Douglas belongs to that class of the National Democracy 
"who believe that the Constitution of the United States neither 
establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the States or Territories, 
beyond the power of the people legally to control it," the 
converse whereof asserts, in unmistakable meaning, that the 
Constitution establishes or prohibits Slavery in the States or 
Territories at will, but within the power of the people legally to 
control it ; thus he admits, in his own proposition, the Constitu- 
tional right to regulate the subject of Slavery not only in the 
Territories, but (tell it not South,) in the States, where, when 
it exists, it is a legal institution, that no Republican dreams 
of disturbing. The power of the people legally to control slavery 
is impotent surplusage, idle to introduce into a controverted 
subject, and partaking largely of scenic clap-trap — has it not 
always, until within a few years, existed without question or 
mooting? — have not the people of South Carolina, to-day, the 
right to control Slavery legally, and expel it from their borders 
if they choose? But how can the Constitutional provision, 
thus, as Mr. Douglas admits, establishing or prohibiting slavery 
in the Territories, (I omit States, in mercy to the gentleman,) 
be enforced, except by Congressional action, and have not the 
people of a Territory in their election of a Legislature, (as is 
uniformly followed,) full power over the subject of Slavery, as 
over every other subject matter that interests them locally? I 
but glance here at the results which legitimately follow from 
the logical interpretation of the language of the Senator; they 
are radiant with hope, and if the mildest of the Democratic 
sections, led on by a man of energy and ambition, in the 
well-poised sentence that concentrates and embodies his con- 
struction of the Constitution, find that they are marshalled 
under false colors, and are marching North, too far North, 
when told, in the loud tones of their leader, that their step 
and mission are South, these gentlemen, a numerous body, 
untinged with fanaticism, and obedient only to the will of the 
Constitution, will pause and retreat from the covert ambush of 
Mr. Douglas' favorite proposition. 

But let us try to disregard language, and vindicate the 
Senator's intent, however expressed. Except he beguiles us 
and seeks to delude our virgin judgment, Mr. Douglas means 
to inform the Nation that the Constitution of the United 



States confers no power upon Congress to interfere with the 
question of Slavery in the States or Territories whatever, but 
that the people thereof, and they alone, control it — I omit the 
words "subject only to the Constitution of the United States" for 
if Mr. Douglas is sincere, they are inapposite. Doubtless 
Congress, under the Constitution, has the right of yea or nay 
when a Territory applies for admission as a State, but, except 
in this instance, which he cannot deny, and which leaves him 
in a dread position, his theory excludes all Congressional 
interference. This is the only doctrine I can unravel from his 
circumlocution, and although subtlety has varied resources, 
and can conveniently change the complexion and meaning of 
a proposition indifferently expressed, sometimes for a purpose, 
I submit to the public 'if this is not the true intent of the 
doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty? 

When the gentleman interposed the words "subject only to 
the Constitution of the United States," why not elucidate his 
exception, by declaring, in a word, in addition thereto, where, 
in the Constitution, the provision lies, that makes the action 
of the people in a Territory or State, on the question of 
Slavery, subject to its control. If the people of a Territory 
are perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institution 
of Slavery by leave of the Constitution, as Mr. Douglas 
reiterates, should he not be careful to point out where the 
subjection of this perfect freedom is implied or expressed in 
the Supreme Law — what is its amount and limit ? In the 
absence of such authority, which he has not adduced, and 
cannot, I will treat this language as it merits, in considering 
the meaning of a political proposition of an American States- 
man — I will pass it without notice — for among other reasons, 
if the Constitution of the United States subjects the perfect 
freedom of the people of a State or Territory _ to form and 
re'gulate their domestic institution of Slavery in their own 
way, to restriction, it necessarily establishes or prohibits 
Slavery therein at pleasure. If such be the result, what becomes 
of the Senator's hallucination? I shall, therefore, omit 
noticing it, out of respect to the subject, or, if I touch upon 
it again, it shall be when it may perchance benefit the Senator, 
if possible — nor would it do to allow a national mischief to have 
any chance of further existence. 

Mr. Douglas' doctrine then, the true meaning of the propo- 
sition in his first classification, which he upholds and embellishes, 
apart from any redundancy of words that have no application, 
or if any, one fatal to his purpose, is, that under the Constitution, 
the people of a State or Territory are perfect freemen to form 



8 

and regulate their domestic institution of Slavery in their own 
way. To elucidate this, without any necessity, he addresses 
himself with varied historical learning, Colonial, Revolutionary 
and National. In a series of facts, recited from the history of 
of the Colonies, Virginia especially, he maintains the distinction 
that he draws in the first place between Federal and Local 
authority, and argues that while the Colonies, to the very last, 
implicitly yielded imperial authority to Great Britain, they 
still insisted upon their right of making their own local laws, 
forming their own domestic institutions and managing their 
own internal affairs, Slavery included, in their own way, 
subject only to the English Constitution, as the paramount 
law of the Empire. 

He further avers that the Colonies recognized and conceded 
to the Imperial Government all general powers, including the 
right to institute their government, by granting charters, 
under which, the inhabitants residing within the limits of any 
specified territory, might be organized into a political community, 
with a government consisting of its appropriate departments, 
executive, legislative and judicial; but that conceeding all 
these powers, the Colonies emphatically denied that the 
Imperial Government had any rightful authority to impose 
taxes upon them without their consent, or to interfere with 
their internal polity — claiming that it was the birthright of all 
Englishmen, inalienable, when formed into a political com- 
munity, to exercise and enjoy all the rights privileges and 
immunities of self-government, in respect to all matters and 
things, which were local and not general, internal and not 
external, Colonial and not Imperial, as fully as if they were 
inhabitants of England, with a fair representation in Parliament. 
The statement proceeds to say "that our fathers of the 
Revolution were contending, not for independence in the first 
instance, but for the inestimable right of local self-government 
under the British Constitution — the right of every distinct 
political community, dependent Colonies, Territories, and 
Provinces, as well as sovereign States, to make their own local 
laws, form their own domestic institutions, and manage their 
own internal affairs in their own way, subject only to the 
Constitution of Great Britain, as the paramount law of the 
Empire;" further "the Government of Great Britain had 
violated this inalienable right of local self-government by a 
long series of acts on a great variety of subjects." 

I rescue myself here from the tedium of further quotation, 
so prolific of the style peculiar to Mr. Douglas, and which, 
being his own, differs materially from the S} r nopsis of the 



9 

argument in favor of the Compromise Act of 1850, which he 
extracts and condenses in his defense, and to which he puts in 
a surreptitious claim of quasi, that is at once repudiated _ by 
the luminous language of Mr. Clay. He sought to conciliate 
the Nation upon a morbid subject, but was yet too pure, even 
for the highest object of human ambition, to interpolate the 
text of the Constitution, or give it intentionally a false gloss. 
I will cheerfully yield to the weight of the inferential reasoning 
of the Senator, whatever he claims for it fairly, if the facts of 
Colonial remonstrance on the subject of Slavery, and the 
tyranny of the British crown in answer thereto, be correctly 
stated, which I deny. A parallel is drawn between the Con- 
stitution and Government of Great Britain and her American 
Colonies, (differing in legislation on the matter of Slavery,) 
on the one side, and the Constitution and Congress of this 
Union and the rights of the people of its Territories therein, 
on the other ; and the inference drawn is, that the constant 
struggle of the Colonial Legislatures against the interference 
of the British crown, contrary to the Constitution of England 
and the rights of the Colonies as denned in their Charters, 
being facts well known to the Congress of 1774, induced them 
to include the following among the series of their resolutions : 
" That they are entitled to a free and exclusive power in their 
several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of represen- 
tation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and 
internal polity :" and that, therefore, because of this resolution, 
and still more because of the action of the Federal Convention 
of 1787, which formed the present Constitution, wherein the 
dividing line between Federal and Local authority, in respect 
to Terrtories, was distinctly marked, it is patent, that in all the 
Legislation, inchoate, progressive, or final, connected with the 
Constitution, it could not have been within the intent of these 
organic founders to introduce therein any provision authorizing 
the interference of Congress on the subject of Slavery in the 
Territories. 

The attempt to draw a parallel between Great Britain and 
her Colonies, and the United States and her Territories, is not 
only infelicitous, but positively offensive. Can the Senator 
point out where, in the British Constitution, any letter breathes 
the distinction which he so fancifully draws between imperial 
and local rights in the Colonies ? can he lead us to any provision 
the most faint in the Colonial charters (mere patents of several 
kings, given and revoked at pleasure, yielding no inalienable 
birthrights, as Mr. Douglas mockingly intimates,) which 
segregates the local rights of the Colonies from the general 



10 

privileges of the crown? Can lie produce any act of the 
British Parliament — whose legislation the Senator should be 
informed was the supreme law, overruling, at pleasure, this 
British Constitution that he so tastefully puts in juxtaposition 
with the Constitution of our country — suspending at will the 
Habeas Corpus Act, the right of trial by jury, and other com- 
ponent parts of this mythical sex inscripta, can he adduce 
any act of this supreme authority, during our Colonial existence, 
that conferred one jot or tittle of privilege upon or recognized 
an inalienable right of any American Colony, independent of 
the parent power ? If such things do not exist, what becomes 
of his statement that the Revolution was based upon the non- 
recognition, by England, of the inalienable local rights of the 
Colonies, when they had none ; why, after a bare mention of 
the imposition of taxes without the consent of the payer, does 
he studiously avoid the fundamental cause of the Revolution, 
(taxation without representation,) and lay the burden of that 
weighty movement upon the subordinate question of local 
rights, that did not legally exist, and never were declared 
inalienable, until the American Charter arose. Does he term 
the taxation, against which the Colonies rebelled, an internal 
and not an external matter ? and if by compulsion he is forced 
to admit it an imperial impost, against which the Colonies had 
no objection save one, viz : the denial to them of a voice in 
the laying of it, either in the Parliament of Great Britain, by 
their representatives there, or by the confirmatory vote of the 
local Legislature, how does he affirm it, that the interference 
by England with what he calls the internal polity of the 
Colonies, (the Slavery question,) was not treated by her and 
resisted by them, as an imperial right? Will it be said that 
the dividing line between Federal and Local authority was 
ever heard of, much less legalized, in any government of the 
world, before the demarcation was first drawn by the Colonists 
and solemnly affirmed in the Constitutions of the United 
States ? That it was mooted and canvassed in the Colonies, is 
obvious, as every other subject of political right was treated — 
but it was merely embryotic and invasive, novel and revolu- 
tionary, never recognized, but on the contrary scorned and 
abhorred by Mr. Douglas' model Government of Great Britain, 
from whom we derive, quoth he, our political theory and 
system, as he delineates in such exact parallel. The privileges 
of the English Charters were all that legally belonged to the 
Colonies, and of these, whatever they were, they were only 
tenants at will — not a ray of political right illuminates these 
dreary documents — they dole out petty powers as a miser 



11 

dispenses small charity, while lie grasps the real treasures 
witl 1 a death hold. It is an incomprehensible slight to the intel- 
ligence of the Nation, that the productive rights of States and 
Territories, as authoritatively enunciated in the Federal Con- 
stitution, and bearing the impress of perpetuity, should be 
indecently trifled with, by an elaborate assimilation with the 
barren grants to the Colonies, contained in the Charters of 
their kings, arbitrary as they were, and revocable at will. Is 
not history an open page, and can its facts be altered by Mr. 
Douglas' declamation ? the American Revolution was based 
not upon any violation by England of rights and privileges 
by her conferred upon the Colonies, and which she afterwards 
interdicted them in the exercise of, but upon the utter abne- 
gation and tyrannous denial to her Colonial subjects of a right 
(representative taxation,) which was enjoyed by her people 
at home, aided and abetted by her stern refusal to the Colonics, 
of the exercise of certain other rights, which they claimed to 
be, first just, finally inalienable, of dealing, for instance, with 
the domestic question of Slavery— to use the gentleman's 
familiar, not to say homely language — in their own way. These 
Charters were not even the true representatives of value — they 
were more honest on their face, however, than the Senator's 
interpretation of them ; he reads them as containing the gold 
and silver standard of the Constitution of our country — 
what a mockery ! They were tested by truer alchemists, Mr. 
Jefferson for one, and pronounced base, whereupon they were 
seized and destroyed by the iron hand of the Revolution. 

The Senator can take nothing by this adroit attempt at 
inferential aid from the preliminary quarrels, the war of words, 
between England and the Colonies. There is no paternity in 
the descent of a political right, which, though claimed and 
embryotic, was never in existence, towards one that can be 
plainly found living in a written Constitution — neither are we 
required to understand the voice or silence of an instrument, by 
the light of preliminary facts, so dim and indistinct as to render its 
characters cabalistic. Mr. Douglas cannot deceive the American 
people into the belief that, because England would not permit 
the Colony of Virginia to check and restrain the policy of 
negro importation and increase, " by the inhuman use of the 
Royal negative," the framers of the Constitution, therefore, 
would be deterred from inserting, in that instrument, a provision 
authorizing the very right which the Colonies claimed. He 
cannot wrench the facts of Colonial history from their true 
application, although he will not take them, so to speak, as 
they come, nor has he the power to extract from the disjointed 



12 

statement any reasoning in aid of his wry inferences, which, 
even a gownsman cannot dissipate. I pass from this attempt 
at inferential aid, in behalf of the doctrine of "Squatter Sove- 
reignty," by virtue of the effect of our Colonial history, 
conceived with a shrewdness and treated with a transparency 
altogether worthy of t^e gentleman's capacity. 

The Constitution provides, that " Congress shall have power 
to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations 
respecting the Territories, or other property belonging to the 
United States ;" this is a provision that has some bearing on 
the subject of territorial treatment — the import of the term 
" Territory," the extent and scope of its meaning become then 
essential to understand the object of this Constitutional 
provision. Mr. Douglas strenuously advocates that it shall be 
interpreted according to the understanding of the day in which 
it was first used. Why should he dread any knavish abuse 
of the word ? it had never been used or understood, says he, 
at the time the Constitution was framed, to designate a political 
community or government of any kind, in any law, compact, 
deed of session or public document, but had invariably been 
used in its geographical sense, to describe the superficial area 
of a state or district of country, as in the Virginia Deed of 
Cession of the " territory or tract of country" Northwest of the 
Eiver Ohio ; or, as meaning land in its character of property, 
in which latter sense it appears in this clause of the Constitution 
when providing for the disposition of the "territory or other 
property belonging to the United States." These facts, says 
he, taken in connection with the kindred one, that during the 
whole period of the Confederation and the formation of the 
Constitution, the temporary governments, which we now call 
territories, were invariably referred to in the deeds of cession, 
laws, compacts, plans of government, resolutions of Congress, 
public records and authentic documents, (the Statesman is as pro- 
fuse as a country attorney,) as States, or "new States," conclu- 
sively show that the words "territory and other property," in the 
Constitution, were used to designate the unappropriated lands 
and other property which the United States owned, and not 
the people who might become residents on those lands, and 
be organized into political communities after the United States 
had parted with their title." The meaning of all which 
crowded verbiage is that in the year 1787, when the Constitu- 
tion was constructed, the term " territory" meant land in its 
character of property, and did not designate a political 
community or government of any kind. Such is the definition 
that pleases Mr. Douglas, and although a very limited one, 



13 

jet, for this instance, it pleases us also. But, as it appears by 
Mr. Douglas, there were in those days temporary governments, 
now by us called Territories, then, that is, during the whole 
period of the Confederation and the formation of the Consti- 
tution (from 1778 to 1787,) known and referred to as States, 
or new States, I would enquire of the gentleman, from what 
source these go vermental formations arose ? But was there any 
Territorial organization in existence from 1778 to 1787, the 
period he quotes — if there was none, and if the origin of our 
government is not yet lost, like that of the Eoman, in fable, 
and never will be, I foretell, except Mr. Douglas assumes the 
character of its historian, what becomes of his interpretation 
of a provision that had its existence in the future, and did not 
operate on the present or the past, for the reason that there 
were none. If they were in existence, it must be by some 
authority, and where, except in this provision, is that authority 
to be found. This power, granted Congress by the Constitution, 
was the first born offspring of a new order of political necessity ; 
it was never needed before, and was given at the proper time 
as an authority to govern the future. Many political organi- 
zations having sprung up since 1787, not called States, or 
" new States" — which never did exist, except in Mr. Douglas' 
mythology — but Territories, as the term is now understood by 
the people of this country, and was always understood from 
the beginning of the formation of the governmental organiza- 
tions called Territories, I am here prepared to enquire, if the 
Senator is prepared to answer, how and by what authority, 
except of this provision of the Constitution, these solemn 
governmental organizations were created. This clause, accord- 
ing to his statement, merely grants Congress an auctioneer's 
license to cry its lands, or the authority of a peddler to 
dispose of its governmental rubbish. I always thought, 
however, that the ownership of property implied the right of 
adjustment, transfer and sale, without the aid of a provision of 
the Constitution of the United States to justify it — but I will 
yield it, to accommodate the Senator ; if he struggles 
to humiliate and dishonor the bright Charter of American 
Rights, I will accompany him any distance, until he 
reap the full reward of his impiety. If the Constitu- 
tion was scrupulously careful to provide for the meanest 
details of the Territorial household, its authors must have 
been singularly provident and elaborate, in regard to the 
birth and nurture of the occupant. These republican nurse- 
lings were dearer in the eyes of the stern patriots of the 
Revolution, than all the baby progeny of kings. The Constitu- 



14 

tion was to be the text book from which the Federal Govern- 
ment and its administrators were to draw their instructions for 
territorial management. Mr. Douglas admits, strange to say, 
that the provision empowering Congress to institute temporary 
governments for the new States, arising in the unappropriated 
lands of the United States, submitted by Mr. Madison in the 
Convention and referred to the proper committee, was after- 
wards embodied and now exists as a power in the Constitution. 
I demand of him where, in the Constitution, if not in this 
needful rule and regulation clause, where he all but swears 
it does not exist — if not there, where then, thou embodiment 
of consistency and logic ! Those Revolutionary sires, whom 
the gentleman never lets slip the opportunity of piously 
lauding, with the calm unction and affected sigh of a faded 
beauty, who lives by what she lost, must have been very 
heartless fathers, in making no provision for the legitimate 
offspring of the country ; yet, after all, the founders of the 
Constitution were not these improvident progenitors, nor are 
the Territories foundlings, as Senator Douglas would cruelly 
inform them — they are the decen dents and co-heirs of the general 
government, raised and protected by its parent hand, according 
to the letter and spirit of this Constitutional provision, without 
which there was no connecting tie, no family link between the 
relatives — the Constitution makes the Territory a child of the 
Federal Government and an inheritor of State rights — the 
doctrine of " Squatter Sovereignty," like the spirit of evil, for 
an unholy purpose, would originate strife between child and 
parent, exile the stripling from the threshold and hearth of 
its founder, invent where it could not find, stubbornly deny 
where it could not overlook, palliate and avert where it must 
meet, and mystify where it could not blot out ; and all this, 
with a bluster of patriotism, and an air of disinterested love 
of the public, that naturally befits Mr. Douglas. 

A distinction is sought to be drawn between the amount of 
Congressional authority, legal in the Territories, and that over 
the District, the seat of the government of the United States, 
from the difference of language used in the Constitution. The 
right of the exercise of exclusive legislation, in all cases what- 
soever, over the District of Columbia, and all places in the 
States, where the general Government erected needful buildings, 
forts, magazines, &c, makes the difference, it is said, in the 
powers, and draws the line between Federal and Municipal 
authority. Sovereignty, wherever placed, is a unit, and retains 
all it vast proportions naturally, except when shorn thereof 
in part by express original compact ; limited sovereignty is the 



15 

distinctive theory of our system, and the great extent to which 
we have carried it, has worked wonders in the good govern- 
ment of men ; it is an American invention, the patenting of 
which cost profusely, but it pays better than the discovery of 
the needle, the art of printing, electricity, or the cotton gin ; 
the language which embodies this vital principle must be 
construed with the utmost circumspection, nor }-et its intent 
reached with any niggard hand ; above all it must be preserved 
sacred from the taint of causistry. When the provision in 
the Constitution, concerning the mode of government, what- 
ever it is, of the Territories and the District, were enacted, 
there was no Territorial organization in being, and the District 
laud was not yet acquired of the States ; the Constitutional 
provisions were, therefore, prospective in their operation ; the 
species of provision that was applicable to a District, was not, 
however, applicable to a Territorv — in process of time, the 
Territory would become a State, which form the District could 
never assume, under any circumstances — hence the separate 
provisions and the difference in them — the one provides for a 
permanent organization, the other for a transitory form of 
government ; besides, the Constitution erected the Federal 
Government by subtracting from State sovereignties certain 
attributes, which loss, the Territories, when they lapsed into 
States, should also encounter ; a condition that need not at all 
be regarded in the case of the District — her fate was final, that 
of a Territory diurnal — hence a necessary difference of Consti- 
tutional provision — The exercise of exclusive legislation, in 
all cases, whatever, over the District — being an unrestricted 
petty sovereignty, differing from the State and Federal sove- 
reignties, as defined and limited, elsewhere, in the Constitution 
—is granted expressly, to guard it forever, as it was a perpetuity, 
from such analogies as those of Mr. Douglas; but, in the case 
of Territories, the undisputed sovereignty therein, that 
enured instanter to the Federal Government the moment she 
acquired the soil, as, for instance, the gift from Virginia, in 
178-4, remained paramount and intact by Constitutional 
restriction, it being beside the necessity of the case, to 
interfere with the solemn right of sovereignty for a transient 
and fleeting occasion ; hence Federal power in the District of 
Columbia and the localities of forts, arsenals, &c., is marked 
out distinctly, being an exclusive power, different from any 
other in the Constitution ; and hence, also, Federal power in 
the Territories, without its sovereignty therein being at all 
questioned, is required in the general language befitting the 
case, "to dispose of the territory, or other property, belonging 



16 

to the United States, and to make all needful rules and regula- 
tions respecting the same," being nothing more, whilst it 
endorses the absolute inherent sovereignty in the Federal 
Government over the Territories, in the most comprehensive 
terms, than pointing out how that sovereignty should be 
exercised by " Congressional Legislation" — analyse the pro- 
vision : ' ' Congress shall have power to dispose of the Territory 
belonging to the United States" — "dispose" — does the 
language furnish a more comprehensive term for the purpose ; 
perhaps, in the copiousness of his diction, the Senator could 
supply it — but Mr. Madison, who was not given to wordiness, 
selected it as the apposite term "to authorize Congress to 
institute temporary governments for the new States" — nay, so 
absolute is the aspect in which this and its kindred language 
in the provision regards the sovereignty of the Federal Gov- 
ernment over the Territories, that the terms employed "dispose" 
— " rules and regulations" is the language used by the Autocrat 
respecting his serf, and the master of his slave— you are not 
compelled even to legislate for them — sic volo sicjubeo. It is 
admitted that Mr. Madison submitted to the Constitutional Con- 
vention, as of certain powers, the one "to institute temporary 
government for the new States," and that the provision, of which 
we are treating, was the result of this proposition, or, in the words 
of Mr. Douglas, " here we find the original and rough draft of 
these several powers as they now exist in their revised form 
in the Constitution." What sense of public honor then belongs 
to the corrupt assertion that this clause of the Constitution merely 
confers power on Congress " to provide for the survey and 
sale of the land, military sites, old ships, cannon, muskets, or 
other property, real or personal, which belonged to the United 
States, and are no longer needful for any public purpose ?" Of 
equal decency— also, that is, in defiance of all decency, is the 
following reputable statement, "such a power, had it been 
vested in Congress, would annihilate the svereoignty and 
freedom of the States, as well as the principle of self govern- 
ment in the Territories wherever the United States happened 
to own a portion of the public lands within their respective 
limits, as at present, in several States and Territories," 
(enumerating twenty of them.) To what shifts political, like 
other crime, drives its votaries ; Mr. Douglas, having doggedly 
affixed a vicious interpretation to the Constitutional text, is 
compelled to take refuge in the States, in order to justify his 
version of a provision, which he himself admits, was prepared 
by Mr. Madison and embodied in the Constitution only for the 
Territories, and here in this notable passage contends that his 



17 

interpretation is conclusive, because, if the owner of property 
in a State, (the Federal Government, for instance,) exercises 
the right of ownership by selling it, a right that is inherent, 
and needs no law to authorize its exercise, the sovereignty and 
freedom of the State are annihilated and the great principle of 
self-government in the Territories is ruined; he has taken 
refuge in the States, a fugitive for the crime committed in the 
Territories, and I here invoke the aid of the Constitutional pro- 
vision to reclaim him. 

The Senator is rather partial to political inuendo; when 
he finds _ himself stripped of all direct authority in the 
Constitution to invest a Territory with the insignia of 
government, after he weakly abandons the only provision 
that furnishes them, he falls back upon the mysteries 
of inference and the power of comparison — u the provision," 
says he, " to authorize Congress to institute temporary govern- 
ments for the new States or Territories and to provide for 
their admission into the Union, appears in the Constitution in 
this form, "new States may be admitted by Congress into this 
Union," — "the power," he continues, "to admit new States' 1 
and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to 
that end, may fairly be construed to include the right to 
institute temporary governments for such new States or 
Territories, the same as Great Britain could rightfully institute 
similar governments for the Colonies, but certainly not to 
authorize Congress to legislate in respect to their municipal 
affairs and internal concerns, without violating that great 
fundamental principle, in defence of which the battles of the 
Keyolution were fought." Mr. Douglas, knowing that Terri- 
torial governments have been created by Congress under the 
sanction of the Constitution, sets out with a firm resolve to 
lose the authority where it exists, and to find it where it is 
not. The 3rd Section of the fourth Article of the Instrument 
has two subdivisions in very few words — in these lines the power 
is comprised, or nowhere ; Phocion could not have written 
them more succinctly, nor Tacitus more terse — in fact, a greater 
than the Greek for brevity, or the historian for clearness, 
composed the simple words that create and govern those 
infant empires. But Mr. Douglas waywardly selects the 
creating for the governing power ; he will not accept the truth, 
no more than the mistress her gift, except indirectly. The 
power to admit new States, and (grant him his interpolation,) 
to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to that 
end, may not fairly be construed to include the right to 
institute temporary governments for such new States or 

2 



IS 

Territories under any circumstances. The power to admit is 
totally distinct from the power to govern: the one is of form, 
the other of substance. According to Mr. Douglas' version, 
we may as well as aught else read his reasoning, as authorizing 
Congress to institute governments for the infant State, after its 
admission. Bur. although the statesman reasons as the worsted 
Athlete fought wildly. I cannot, for the honor of the Presi- 
dency, allow the candidate to perpetrate the blunder of a 
Driveller. Mr. Douglas surely means that the power of 
Congress to admit an organized Territory into the family of 
s, after having reached a certain grade oi' maturity, 
including numbers of inhabitants, proper form of State 
Constitution, application and requirement, although an Act of 
finality, which terminated the territorial life, and gave another 
existence to the community, included, also, the right to 
exercise, not a subsequent or inferential, but a prior function 
of power, viz, to govern the Territories, as England did her 
Colonies, with a discrimination in favor of municipal and 
internal legislation ; still this is bad reasoning; even the 
schools pronounce it so. Were it the contrary case, there would 
be a vivid show of reason for him in the absence of Constitu- 
tional provision. If the Constitution omitted all mention of 
the power of Congress to admit new States, endorsing as it 
does the inherent power of the Federal Authority to institute 
temporary governments for the Territories, the inferential 
argument of the gentleman would be valid, because the 
Territorial government, form and style, were only temporary, 
and must necessarily ripen into the majority of State existence; 
but a Territory may well be admitted by Congress Constitu- 
tionally into the Union as a State, without its ever having 
had any concern with the Territorial mode of life, in case the 
Constitution were silent on the subject. And, in fact, although 
the Constitution declares how the Territory is to be governed 
by Congress, when the soil belongs to the Union, yet, such is 
the liberality of construction properly given to this power of 
the admission of new States, that even when the territory, that 
is the soil composing one, never before belonged to the Federal 
Government, it is still unhesitatingly admitted by Congress 
upon proper application. What becomes of Mr. Douglas' 
inferential power of Congress to govern a Territory, from the 
right of admission of new States, in the case of Texas ? Did 
this Government own the soil of the Territory previously, or 
exercise any jurisdiction there? Such is the humiliation to 
which a wilful misconstruction of one Constitutional provision, 
and an unnatural construction of another, reduce the argument 



19 

o: :..-- :■•;-■: -:...::.— II--. :.: -. :'. - • 

he j -tract and vindicate the t from soda 

rinciple in disptr. Britain and the 

1 

ven made Senator 
— .: literated the 

• _-.-;„- 

.:.-.-•.. -iy.r. ■-..- ; : ... \\_._ ~...\ .'_ .r..... !-r. .:. -iris- :: — _::':_ 
the battles of the devolution w _ 

the gentleman, tvranr . . ■ it fdnda- 

-. - 

r.il 
: oi ci - 

r elect: Mr. 

I j 

mterferenee with American rights, as i _ . 

I 

- . - . 

Ml Douglas - 

fa : - : - : 

- Scott cag '.'.■ m - 

easily satii 11 I ■ . • 

timid man would .torn 

ruin of . . _. - 

- ourt: fori 

ned. fbr after lir. g ing omes 

chill-. the f inaL 

rlne of ? _ in the 

"out a d. 

ip like a - appal him. Mr. I>ouglas 

— - 
plan: 

rritory outs - . .- _ .Lmits 

Stsrtee id 1 i : ;..-:.: ~ :~g uemp- 

y-juired:- 
upon pon the same oal provision. 

9 may be admitted by Congress into this 
— ~ " :o acquire 

But agreeing in the liffer 

in its results Mr. I ■ _ las . firms 

"Popular - s - i-oring in the 

ritories/' of this rignt to acquire and to - — ::h a 



20 



terminus attached to it, thus, " the Constitution of the United 
States neither establishes nor prohibits Slavery m the 1 em- 
tories, beyond the power of the people legally to control it; 
but (it) leaves the people thereof perfectly free to form and 
regulate their domestic institutions, (slavery) in their own way, 
subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Here 
is the goal of Mr. Douglas' reasoning. Not so but far 
different the dictum of the Court. In a series of professional 
inference and in language, clear and free from all vulgar 
redundancy, the Supreme Court proceeds step by step, from the 
same Constitutional provision, to show, first, the inevitable 
consequence of that provision, as to the right of the federal 
Government to acquire territory, then, the power to preserve 
it beino- the necessary consequence of acquisition, and to 
apply it°to the purposes for which it was acquired; next the 
right to institute temporary governments therefor, and then 
in more minute recital and detail, the powers and restrictions 
of these Territorial Governments, and the rights of persons 
and property therein. Let me not be understood as yielding 
any unfair preference to the reasoning of the Supreme Court 
over that of Mr. Douglas ; far from it— I hold an equal balance, 
although I confess to a leaning towards dignity in language. 
The Court have not, of course, combined their reasoning on 
the slavery question in the Territories, into an extract with a 
title in two words endorsed on it, ready to distribute out gratis 
as a panacea for the political ills of the country ; but like able 
i urists well versed in the doctrine of construction, and warping, 
thereby, the plain intent and spirit of the Constitution the 
canker vice inherent in all ages in the Interpreters of law, they 
lead to the conclusion, among other things, "that the govern- 
ment and the citizen both entering a Territory under the 
authority of the Constitution, with their respective rights 
defined and marked out, and the property of a citizen being 
protected by the Constitution, if that property be a slave 
(which, by the Constitution, is recognized as such,) no legis- 
lation of Congress, or of the Territorial Government its 
creature, nor consequently of thepeople of aTerntory whoelect 
the Legislature, can exercise any power over such slave 
property, beyond what the Constitution confers, nor lawfully 
deny aiiv right which it has reserved"-to meet this result, 
it is idkto say that Slavery is subject to the local law like 
all other property of the citizen, as Mr Douglas would fain 
make us conside/it; for there is no local law all the law m a 
Territorv is Congressional-in other words, the Congressional 
is the local law. Here there is an open rupture, with defiance 



21 

to the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty. Mr. Douglas depre- 
cates it, and insists that this cannot be the true construction of 
the Opinion, and that the Court means something else, for he 
seems to consider the Opinion as oracular, and that undertaking 
to interpret the true meaning of the Constitution, it stands 
itself in need of a high priest to discover its own import. If 
the Slavery question be included among the forbidden powers, 
that is cannot be reached or affected in any way in the Terri- 
tories by any legislation, Congressional or Territorial, but is 
there carried and preserved, like all other property, sacred by 
force of the Constitution, then Mr. Douglas is in despair ; for 
the authority that brings and guards it so sacredly in the 
Territories, exercises the same kind offices towards Slavery in 
the States, and Pennsylvania and Illinois are no more 
exempt from the institution Constitutionally, than Kansas or 
Utah. And such is the meaning of the oracle as interpreted 
by another authority, the chief Executive of the Nation, who 
announces that the Supreme Court decides that Slavery "exists 
in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, 
and that Kansas is, therefore, at this moment, as much a Slave 
State as Georgia or South Carolina,'' — to which interpretation 
Mr. Douglas responds in despair, "Why does it not exist in 
Pennsylvania by virtue of the same Constitution?'' 

Mr. Douglas and the Supreme Court do not then agree as to 
the legal condition of Slavery in the Territories. Starting 
from the same centre, they reach different points of the 
circumference. There must be something radically wrong in 
their primary position, else sensible men like the Senator, and 
sensible and learned men like the Court, could not have 
wandered away so far from each other and from the truth. 
They have mistaken the Constitution. Hence the fanciful 
folly of this doctrine of " Popular Sovereignty" — an insult to 
the high intelligence of the country, although an invention 
worthy of the erratic genius of its author. Hence, also, the 
commentary on slavery by the Supreme Court — a monstrous 
product, making evil no longer partial but universal, and 
justifying the commission of political felony throughout the 
land, in the name of a benign Constitution. 

The Constitution of the United States, notwithstanding its 
novelty as an institute, and the vast influence that it brings to 
bear upon the subject matters of which it treats, being the 
most important that interest mankind either for good or evil, 
is nothing but a law, and, notwithstanding its vital authority 
and scope, contains within itself no element of creative power 
beyond the simplest act of legislation. A State statute, 



22 

erecting a turnpike in Missouri, or a municipal corporation in 
Ohio, is obscure legislation, yet it possesses the same kindred 
germ of authority that is inherent in the Constitution. On 
the other hand, the potent Constitution is limited by the same 
natural inability that confines the insignificant statute. When 
the act of the Legislature grants the turnpike right, or the 
corporation privilege, it defines and limits the right or the 
privilege, but it does not assume a power beyond its sphere, 
and create or bestow the locality of the city or the road. 
These things are in esse, provided beforehand by a power 
different from the legislative, and belonging to another order 
of acquisition altogether — they are of the matters which 
legislation may act upon, but cannot confer. The Constitution 
having adjusted with wondrous comprehension and brevity, 
several powers on the subject matters entitled to priority, 
addresses itself, in the third section of its fourth Article, to 
ascertain and define what powers it will entrust to its agent, 
Congress, in regard, first, to the admission of new States into 
the Union, and secondly, to the disposing of and making all 
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other 
property belonging to the United States. It does not confer 
the soil, the material substance out of which the new States 
are to be carved, nor the territory, the disposal of which, and 
the making of all needful rules and regulations respecting 
which, it grants to Congress, for this the Constitutional provision 
itself distinctly declares belongs to the United States — belongs 
to the United States either in esse or in futuro, and whenever 
so belonging, to come instanter under the operation of the law 
of the Constitution — that law applicable to the Territory which, 
belonged to the Federal Government when the Constitution 
was adopted, as, for instance, the gift of Virginia in 1784, and 
applicable in all future time to all other territory acquired by 
the United States by virtue of the right inherent in every 
sovereignty, viz: Gift, purchase, or conquest. The acquisition 
of territory is an inherent right in a Nation, not conferred by 
constitutional law; so penetrating is this truth, that one 
instance will suffice, which I shall put in the form interrogata- 
tive : Did the Constitution of the United States confer on the 
Nation the soil of the thirteen Colonies, or did the Nation 
acquire it by conquest from Great Britain, independent 
altogether of a Constitution, not then existence ? When the 
land was acquired, it was first partitioned into States; this 
was one disposition made of it, independent of the Constitution. 
Again, the Nation altered its political status and adopted a 
new rule called the Constitution, for the government of the 



23 

country. To require of the framers of that Constitution to 
grant therein, to the Nation, the right of the acquisition of 
territory, upon which the Constitution was to operate, is a 
demand of that which it was not in the power of the conscript 
fathers to bestow. They knew their sphere and they kept it, 
Theirs was the wisdom to elaborate a system of good govern- 
ment for the territory, belonging to the Nation, without vainly 
usurping a power that was not theirs to exercise. Hence the 
language of the provision is singularly free from any such 
usurpation. If the power to acquire territory for the creation 
of new States, to be disposed of and ruled in its embryo 
condition in a certain way, was intended to be conferred upon 
the Nation by the framers of the Constitution, a proposition 
that would stultify their intelligence, why is there not 
eviscerated by construction from the same Constitutional 
provision, the gift to the Nation of the power to acquire other 
property, such as ships of war, arsenals, &c. ? Is it an inherent 
right in the Nation to acquire such property as this, and yet 
does it require a Constitutional provision to authorize the 
acquisition of territory — does the Constitution draw such a 
distinction in national property? Congress is empowered 
"to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatever, oyer 
all places purchased by the Legislature of the State in which 
the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, 
dock yards, and other needful buildings;" thus when territory 
is needed for federal purposes in a State, since there the 
General Government has no inherent right of the acquisition 
of land, being a component part of the whole, with rights 
reserved, the Constitution confers upon Congress the power of 
purchase and exclusive jurisdiction, not constructively, but in 
explicit language, altogether distinct form the total silence in 
regard to the acquisition of territory, outside the original 
limits of the United States. If the Constitution speaks out 
in regard to the acquisition of a dock yard by the Federal 
Government, and the exercise of jurisdiction therein, a matter 
comparatively insignificant and temporary, and yet obtaining 
a positive provision, although the territory lay within the 
precincts of one of the component parts of the Federal 
Sovereignty, how much more explicit and elaborate, beyond 
the reach of tortuous construction or fallible inference, would 
not the framers of the Constitution have pointed out and 
defined, if they conceived they possessed the power, how 
territory outside the original limits of the United States was 
to be acquired by the Federal Government, whether by gift, 
by purchase, (as in the cases of Arsenal sites,) or by conquest 



24 

— especially when such, territory was destined for the most 
exalted purposes, not the erection of forts, magazines, 
arsenals and dockyards, but the erection of empires, co-ordinate 
with the original States, and sweeping, when launched, into 
line with them under the shadow of the mighty banner of the 
Constitution — such transcendent interests would not be over- 
looked, nor slightly touched upon, much less exposed, as the 
subj ect matter of speculative philosophy of old was to conj ecture, 
to the tender mercies of judicial or political construction. 
The right of the acquisition of territory then being a right 
inherent in the sovereignty, and outside the sphere of the 
Constitution, does not flow, as Mr. Douglas and the Supreme 
Court infer by construction, from the power expressly granted 
to Congress to admit new States into the Union, and hence 
the Senator and the Court have mistaken the Constitution. 

The acquisition of territory is a right inherent in every 
sovereignty, which sovereignty, unless limited by Constitu- 
tional provision, is absolute over every matter subject to 
legislation in the territory when acquired — sovereignty cannot 
be parcelled out, distributed, or confined otherwise than by 
original compact — if there is no limit or restraint imposed 
upon it, it is absolute in itself, and to subtract from its absolute 
nature, you must show the authority. "When the Federal 
Government acquires a territory, its power therein, over every 
subject matter, Slavery included, is supreme, unless confined 
and limited by the Constitution of the United States. Let us 
inspect the Constitution, then, and examine its provisions, 
what of them are, upon the subject of Slavery in the Terri- 
tories : the relation of Master and Slave is extracted from the 
third subdivision of the second section of the fourth article of 
the Constitution, thus: "No person, held to service or labor 
in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, 
shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered 
up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may 
be due ;" herein is the only provision made by the Constitution 
in regard to Slavery in the United States, and the cautious, nay, 
tender use of terms patent in its langnage, manifests distinctly 
the reluctant spirit of the humane men, who, by compulsion, 
drafted and adopted it. What Mr. Douglas and the Supreme 
Court coarsely term Slavery, the Constitution, with the regard 
due to fallen humanity, denominates service or labor, a 
different grade of descent altogether, let the gentlemen know, 
from the bathos of Slavery — and they, who, with equal 
accuracy, are degraded by the titles of Slave and Master, (as 



25 

much a degradation to the one as to the other,) are properly 
named therein, by natural transposition, a servant or laborer, 
a party claimant or creditor. I feel for the indignities offered 
by the powerful to the weak — they excite emotions I cannot 
control — " Names," exclaims the Senator, " often deceive 
persons in respect to the nature and substance of things" — he 
could have employed far more appropriate language than this 
for his purpose, where he uses it, but it suits me here exactly, 
and I claim it without compliment, although it is very probably 
the only claim I shall ever make upon the wisdom of the 
Senator — if there be anything in the quotation, I stamp, by 
virtue thereof, the charge of deception upon Mr. Douglas and 
the Supreme Court, in that thej have used "names which 
deceive persons in respect to the nature and substance of 
things," and to make it the more poignant to the gentleman, I 
employ, with the utmost propriety, his own language as the 
sentence of his condemnation. The solemn periods of states- 
manship and of the august Tribunal of Law of the last resort, 
should not be contaminated with the professional epithet of 
the slave-dealer — there should be no bias, for there should be no 
feeling — no bias of language, as well as no bias of its spirit and 
import, lest the use of the wrong term should lead, as it 
invariably does, to the wrong interpretation. When the chief 
agents of the Constitution, it seems, intend to admeasure out 
its spirit unfairly, like petty dealers, they have recourse to the 
use of fraudulent weights and measures. 

No portion of the Constitution, save this veiled and guarded 
provision, seeks apology at the hands of mankind — elsewhere 
the genius of the great law rules firmly over its vast confines, 
and speaks of the interests confided to his charge in language 
not to be misunderstood ; here alone his air is deprecatory and 
his tongue falters, for he was called upon to make a sacrifice 
of human right at the passionate pleading of his fair and 
favorite twin daughter of the South, and he was forced by 
affection for the fond minion to yield — doubtless she was 
entitled to every other indulgence save this — independent of 
her native charms, the rich and magnificent scenery of her 
abode, the lavish wealth that surrounded her in Orient 
profusion, she could point to the heroic deeds of her sons 
emblazoned on the fields of carnage and the page of history — 
she was entitled to every consideration in the gift of the 
Constitution ; alas ! that she was so beloved and deserving as to 
entreat and obtain a boon, which being violative of human 
right, has been injurious to none other's welfare more than to 
her own. 



But call the thing itself labor or slavery, and call the person 

owing it a laborer or a slave, immaterial as to the question of 

the power of the legal - - lion of the subject in the Terri- 

— Mr. Douglas quotes the Supreme Court to the efl 

from the a which provides for the rendition of 

_ - - the right of property in slaves is distinctly 

and v asly affirmed in: stil :. ' — and coinciding 

Opinion herein, h : is further, and points out 

what s of persons 1 aon explicit! si I - shall be 

I staves, viz: the persons held to service or labor in a 

Si " let the laws thereof — nol - I sfi — .. this position. 

ver. he extends the limit of his term, and avers that 

Stat - Territory also, proving by various referene - I 

3t totion, to Mr. J. - nd Mr. Madison, that the 

word was mdiscriminately apphed to a §ta1 r Territory — 

the extension of the term's import, however, cannot avail him : 

supreme Court were - of the meaning 

of th os Is : limitation '■•under the laics Q fas Mr. 

_ - and could strain S into a Territory with as 

much facility, I .: they avoided the fatal pass g in silence, 

forthev knevr - bag. One word, by way of preliminary, 

ver — the use of redundant epithet or adverb is always 

proof of - - as — vrhen a man wants to 

:f the truth of that which is repugnant to 

he is liberal of language in the same proportion as he is 

: fact, and interlards the use of it with superlatives 

and impietv — the language of truth, on the contrary, is simple 

- bives. N " the right of property in b! 

tisl .: .-'.-- nd expressly affirmed in the Constitution."' 

■a the Supreme C: :—. ~ith such ambitious confidence and 

- - : m the contrary, if the right of property 

- . in contradistinction to the right of prope: 

the labor or service which the person owes, is to be found 

I ''.. if is inferentially stated, and not distinctly and 

aatyi But Mr. Douglas, whohar] M m s Leerily always 

with the Supreme Court whenever they make a forced or 

unfaithful exposition, as usual with that - - : drove Timon 

to misanthropy, excels even the tautology of a Court of 

ry. 

U A slave," Bays Mr. Douglas, "'is a person held to service 

or labor in a Stat — and further "the 

wor : ^ - is used in the clause providing for the rendition 

of fogitzv - applicable to all pohtical communities under 

the authority of the Unit States iuding the Territories, 

3 the sc ral States :f the Union" — therefore, Mr. 



ran held toservice 
or labor in a Si . — 

would appear I J.6. most 

- /.ator him :— • - 

in a "State or Ten - - - re—it 

vivifyin g : Law ordained by the L _ - 

authority Stan ebtcf 

« or lat . " - ~ and the pe: 
service or lab: : -lave— bnt he m: abor 

to another in t 3l - .ud the laws thereof : 
him : - - - 

itmavpc- II " shall be ni 

slavefor service "or labor due in:.. ;Sta1 — 

-erinde^ -zing 

the recorerv of a : i rromlah: land 

unnatural of Mr. I glaa and the S 

of the pr - to the amour- _ given by 

the C I t they - — " 

import of the 

meddling itself with slavery 
capacitv. shall effect for the ~ 

Doui. - -. a Territory, whe: 
the recoverv of a fugitive from labor, because 
inter: I - power c: 

the State to make such a reco-r 

L L Law of 1 3tal —here the re: ' .- - — 

the verv limited four" -" 

. piled upon it so la- - 

- can no longer be traced ban " " 
of the Goths — the provision mere". 

- 1 at the ::me of its | : - - 

: in a future State or Ternl - the laws 

enact :_.- - jf a per- I :r labor in a 

State by J : - L I Law, and " .'. ring thats 

State where e 
perhaps, one the very opposite, shall not be «ed in 

rf the law or regulation c : Stal whi ah he 

- pes, but be c I up. on claim : I 

such - rial may be dm — nor is it herein s 

rhat pro: £ _ " ------ 

~_ Supreme 1 - .-•:-. ::!:"_ upon 

I that the I ■ — in thespinl 

and term- it is intra 1 by then- 

Slav IS verv for Laborer and Service^ 
a person, whom comparative anate: 



28 

physically finished (independent of the master mind,) by the 
mould of the Hand of the Almighty, as the subject body of 
a Chief Justice, into a chattle, a bureau, or an ambling mule, 
it is believed by the honest masses to be inhumanely Penal — 
it is not entitled then to any facilities either of construction 
or enforcement — if the provision be impotent and lame from 
malformation, and the remedy of the prohibited wrong beyond 
reach from uncertainty, it does not become a christian Congress, 
Court and Senator to pretend to the gift of miracles irreligious- 
ly, and assume to make the blind see and the lame walk — 
the age of miracles with some of them at least is past — Mr. 
Douglas has pretensions, but I have no confidence in his ever 
working a miracle — there is nothing in the provision that 
exclusively or by priority requires the Federal Government, 
its Legislature, or officers to be the medium or agents of the 
delivery — the sentence is barren of instruction thuswise, 
either affirmatively or by the Court's favorite process of 
inference — its silence surprises, and means all it does not say — 
if asked, how can you enforce the provision except by Con- 
gressional action and the agency thereby created, in the cause 
of humanity, I repulse the interrogatory as insolent, and will 
not furnish the aggressor with any weapon of offense — if I 
wrest from his hand, which I now haughtily do, the sword of 
the executioner, unjustifiably furnished him by Act of 
Congress, it is enough for me so to disarm him — I am not 
called upon to cull from the brilliant armory of the Constitu- 
tion the bloody weapon of the brigand — it is not there. 

I am, in politeness, here required to apologize to Mr. Douglas 
for unintentional neglect, arising from a division of favors, 
which I did not propose at the outset, between him and the 
Supreme Court — I shall devote myself, therefore, more exclu- 
sively to the gentleman henceforth to the end, and here cast 
off from me the Tribunal — not that I do not part from these 
judges with regret, and they may some day obtain from me 
the sole and strict attention to which they are eminently 
entitled — but I am now engaged and interested in Mr. Douglas, 
and shall not be tempted to quit the pleasant pursuit, even for 
the golden prize that surely awaits the explorer, after he has 
demolished this Judicial Fabric and searched its ruins. 

I admit I have toyed with the Senator in the Barrier in 
which he has placed himself — secure of him, I have paused 
and taken rest — Tamerlane inhumanly constructed an Iron 
Cage m which he immured and exhibited his victim — but he 
was a Pagan and a tyrant, and no example whatever for an 
American gentleman — I weave no meshes either of cob- web 



29 

or of iron — Mr. Douglas' tissue is of his own formation, and 
encloses him as artistically as a spider's woof, and as inexorably 
as ribs of steel — " A slave is a person held to service or labor 
in a State or Territory, under the laws thereof — Territorial 
laws which must be conformatory to the Constitution, are the 
only ones in force in the Territory, and can be enacted only 
by Congress or its Deputy, the Territorial Legislature, elected 
as Congress provides — if the Territorial law holds a person 
to service or labor, and thereby makes him a slave, the 
transmutation is the act of Congress, the agent of the Consti- 
tution, or if the Territorial law does not hold a person to 
service or labor, and is silent thereon, thereby negatively 
refusing to make a person owing service or labor a slave, or, 
if it positively declares that such person shall be nevertheless 
free, it is equally the act of Congress, the agent of the Consti- 
tution; that can pass no law or do no act without the authority 
of its principal — Territorial, like State law, can thus establish 
or prohibit slavery in the Territory at will — such, now, is Mr. 
Douglas on slavery in the Territories ; collate herewith his 
pronunciamento to his followers and the Nation, " The Con- 
stitution of the United States neither establishes nor prohibits 
slavery in the States or Territories beyond the power of the 
people legally to control it, but leaves the people thereof 
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions 
in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the 
United States" — when Congress deputes its legislative power to a 
Territorial Legislature, it elects its deputy by the vote of the 
people — but the act of the lawful agent is the act of his 
principal, and the law of the Territorial Legislature, either 
establishing or prohibiting slavery, is the law of Congress 
authorized by the Constitution. Let Mr. Douglas suit himself 
— if a slave is a person held to service or labor in a Territory 
under the laws thereof, the Constitution of the United States 
does establish or prohibit slavery in the Territory at will, 
beyond all other power, and through the agencies, which it 
must necessarily employ, either Congress, or its deputy, the 
Territorial Legislature, elected as Congress provides, and 
Congress is not limited to any form of deputy or mode of 
election — that is discretionary — and if the laws of a Territory 
establish or prohibit slavery at will, these laws being the act 
of Congress, slavery is thus established or prohibited in the 
Territory by the Constitution. The subtle drift of Mr. Douglas 
tnat when Congress deputes its authority to the Territorial 
Legislature, in whole or in part, the Legislature is elected by 
the people, who may thereby be said to have the power to 



30 

establish or prohibit slavery at will, shall not avail him, for it 
smells rank to heaven of the Legerdemain which is called 
Little, without the huge Adfix. The will of the people here 
is the will of Congress and the Constitution, selected by the 
master powers on account of its exact reflex and similitude, 
and totally absorbed and unknown when the result is reached — 
it cuts back to its authors and is its authors' act. So much for 
the counterfeit casuistry that would not pass current even 
in the schools. If the Senator, then, be correct in his state- 
ment (for, be it observed, I make none of my own, but 
studiously keep aloof from any contact with him whatever,) 
that a slave is "a person held to service or labor in a Territory, 
under the laws thereof" he assumes the office of the Lictor, and 
precipitates his own pronunciamento headlong from the 
Tarpeian Eock of the Constitution — and worse still, he commits 
in addition the crime of parricide, without the merit of a 
Roman Sacrifice for the good of his country, for the malefactor 
whom he immolates is his own illegitimate oflspring. 

In support of his Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty Mr. 
Douglas cites the Act of Congress of 1850, called the Com- 
promise Measures, the resolutions of political parties, Whig 
and Democratic, assembled in National Convention in 1852 for 
the nomination of candidates for the offices of President and 
Vice President, adopting and affirming the principle of these 
Compromise Measures on the question of slavery in the 
organization of Territorial Governments and the admission of 
new States, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, of 1854, based on the 
principle of the Compromise Measures, so far as they are 
applicable to territorial organizations, the unanimous vote of 
the Delegates of the Democratic party from every State in the 
Union, in National Convention assembled in 1856, recognising 
and adopting the principles contained in the Organic Laws 
establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and the 
letter of Mr. Buchanan, the nominee of this Convention, 
approving the recent legislation of Congress respecting 
domestic slavery — the principle involved in these multitudinous 
citations, as far as they refer to the organization of Territories 
is, that the people of the Territories should decide the slavery 
question for themselves through the action of their Territorial 
Legislature. Much stress is laid upon the promise of peace to 
the country, made in the speeches of Senators, the resolutions 
and reports of Conventions and their committees, and the 
affirmatory letter of the present Chief Magistrate, by the 
adoption of this precept. Let us select a few of these conso- 
lations : " The wisdom of those measures is attested, not less 



31 

by their salutary and beneficial effects in allaying sectional 
agitation and restoring peace and harmony to an irritated and 
distracted people, than by the cordial and almost universal 
approbation with which they have been received and sanctioned 
by the whole country" — "by the uniform application of the 
Democratic principle of non-intervention by Congress with 
slavery in State or Territory, or in the District of Columbia, to 
the organization of Territories, and to the admission of new 
States, with or without domestic slavery as they may elect, 
the equal rights of all will be preserved intact, the original 
compacts of the Constitution maintained inviolate, and the 
perpetuity and expansion of this Union insured to its utmost 
capacity of embracing in peace and harmony any future 
American State that may be constituted or annexed with a 
Republican form of Government" — "the recent legislation of 
Congress," reads Mr. Buchanan's letter, "respecting domestic 
slavery, derived, as it has been, from the original and pure 
fountain of legitimate political power, the will of the majority, 
promises, ere long, to allay the dangerous excitement — this 
legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free 
government itself, and in accordance with them has simply 
declared that the people of a Territory, like those of a State, 
shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist 
within their limits. 

Upon these and similar promises of good result to the peace 
and welfare of the country, Mr. Douglas relies for proof of 
the efficacy of the Doctrine of Popular Soveriegnty — they 
differ however somewhat from the certificates that usually an- 
nounce the virtue of other specifics, these being always furni- 
shed by patients or their friends, after they have tested the 
truth of the cure, and have been wholly, or in part restored 
thereby, whereas the endorsements of the infallible compound 
of Popular Sovereignty, are purely prophetic, and these good 
friends of the patient public, Senators, Conventions and 
Presidents, generously subscribe the flaming certificate before 
the medicine is tested — how if the facts nullify the promises, 
and convert the Partiot Douglas into a very Cassandra, whose 
vaticinations by the decree of heaven, must never be credited — 
have the Compromise Measures of 1850, has the Kansas 
Nebraska Act of 1854, the resolutions of National Conven- 
tions, and the endorsement of a Presidential Candidate meta- 
morphosed a policy into a principle, an expediency into a 
right, or the non-intervention by Congress with slavery in a 
Territory, or the District of Columbia, into the want of the 
Constitutional power of such intervention? have they con- 



32 

vinced us that the Constitution does not authorize its agent, 
Congress, to decide whether slavery shall or shall not exist 
within the limits of a Territory, where no other Legislative 
power lives or can live, by virtue of the Constitution, except 
the Legislative power of Congress exercised either per se or 
authoritatively per alium ? have they convinced us that there 
can be two Legislative Organizations in a Territory, the one 
Constitutional and Congressional, to act upon every topic of 
Legislation, save slavery, and the other, a Popular Sovereignty 
Legislature, of which the framers of the Constitution never 
dreamed to ascertain and enact the wishes of the people of the 
Territory on the question of slavery alone ? have they con- 
vinced us that salutary and beneficial effects in allaying sectional 
agitation and restoring peace and harmony to an irritated and 
distracted people, have followed from the wisdom of those 
measures, when the blood of Kansas, (the nursling of one of 
those Acts that carried healing on its wings,) still runs in the 
memory of man as deeply as when it fell in torrents on her 
soil, or when, still worse, the Senator, who fain would claim 
the whole paternity of the monstrous doctrine to himself, and 
allow to others no share in its procreation, unlike the foetid gift 
of the Gods to their poor and barren host, has, since the passage 
of these Acts, up to the present hour, made sectional agitation, 
irritation and distraction, on the slavery question, a profession, 
which he practises unweariedly on the most liberal terms, a con- 
tingent fee? What affinity exists between the vigorous andlusty 
Constitution, and such hermaphrodite legislation, Conventions 
and Statesmen ? Is there no blush on the face of vulgar 
ambition that it should parade before the Nation this morbid 
rhetoric, a painted and spangled garb, such as is studiously 
worn by the diviner to impress his audience with the belief 
of his familiarity with fortune ? The philosophic Statesman, 
when he beholds good result notwithstanding the abeyance of 
principle, sits silent if not satisfied, and pleased with the 
benefit accruing to his country, ruminates calmly on the 
occasion of the ripe harvest which she reaps and he did not 
sow ; but what manner of man is that, philosophic Statesman 
or bad citizen, who forebodes peace when it is war, general 
harmony when it is sectional agitation, universal approbation 
when it is irritation and distraction everywhere, equal rights, 
original compacts, perpetuity and expansion, when it is a 
jumble and a chaos, into which the Constitutional system is 
cast by these raw apprentices, who vainly struggle to reunite 
the fragments they have disjointed, and call, each his patch 
work, the old Constitution. I care not whether they be Gods 



33 

or men in the form of Presidents or Conventions, who rob the 
Constitution of its Territorial rights; I care not for the 
imposing pretense of grandiloquent publication, when it 
embodies no fact and testifies to no truth ; I abjure the 
technical silence that would make believe, that the Compromise 
Measures of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 met no 
soldierly opposition from stern veterans of the Constitution, 
the old and immortal guard, or the inuendo that every member 
of these Democratic Conventions was, by birthright, a states- 
man, according to the Constitutional standard, because he 
applauded these acts of political harlotry openly committed in 
the day of the loss of public virtue ; these things have no 
weight or influence with me, when I plant the ordinance of 
1787 drafted under the eye if not by the pen of Mr. Jefferson, 
(although it is said by Mr. Douglas, with his usual manliness, 
that it was passed by the remnant of the Congress of the 
Confederation, in New York, after its most eminent members 
had gone to Philadelphia,) against the opinion of the Supreme 
Court denying its Constitutionality, and the Missouri Com- 
promise Act of 1820 against the Douglas Act of 1854 which 
repeals it. The Ordinance of 1787 is the twin brother of the Con- 
stitution, born in the same year, of the same august parentage, 
with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison the same sponsors for both, 
and however differing in proportion, as members of a family will, 
belonging to the same pure republican stock of legislation ; 
the Compromise Act of 1820 lived a blameless and quiet life 
of public utility for thirty-four years, during which every 
virtue that was originally claimed for it was realized. The 
harbinger of calm, it more than performed its promise — 
imbued with the spirit of the Constitution, it breathed peace 
and induced repose — not only North of its line, 36°30', where 
it ruled supreme, did sectional feeling abate, and the fell spirit 
of slavery strife die out, but even South thereof, where its j urisdic- 
tion was joint, such was the genial and lenient nature of the 
law, no controversy arose on the partnership account — but Mr. 
Douglas' Constitutional slumbers were disturbed by its 
existence on the statute book, and the tender conscience of 
Mr. Cass was sorely troubled with doubts of its legitimacy ; 
hear the elderly Secretary, then Senator, "I have already 
stated my belief that the rightful power of internal legislation 
in the Territories belongs to the people" — another votary in 
these hopeful times of a double headed Legislature in the 
Territories. This blow at the Missouri Compromse, first given 
by letter in 1848, to cultivate and seduce sectional support for 
the Presidency, cost the gentleman dearly, and he had the 



34 

right to remember the law with a vengeance — he did, and 
voted successfully with Mr. Douglas to repeal it, the wisest 
and most beneficent act of legislation ever passed by Congress, 
before which the Tariff and Bank questions pale and shrink, 
in reference to the internal peace and repose of the country — 
but it shall revive, summoned from its cerements into a new 
existence by the potent call of the Constitution. Mr. Douglas 
places the utmost reliance upon the action of Senators and 
Conventions and Presidential candidates — the Missouri Com- 
promise Act relies solely on the self-interest of a multitudinous 
people, who will be no longer disturbed by Mr. Douglas' never 
ending slavery agitation, and the miserable ambition that 
begets it — when the elements are ripe, the lightning flashes to 
restore nature's equipoise — objects either elevated or low, 
Senators or negroes, melt before its transit — the indignation 
of the American people, when deceived, is not as potent as 
the dread artillery of heaven, but it executes swift vengeance 
for all human purposes, whilst the thunder of their voice 
rumbles fearfully along the hills and elevations of power, as 
it purges the political atmosphere. 

Were it asked of a dispassionate and intelligent citizen, 
whose judgment was not warped by any personal purpose, 
other than what is common to him with every individual 
member of the Nation, "read me these three clauses of the 
3rd and 2nd Sections of the 4th Article of the Constitution, 
and expound to me their true import, viz: Sec. 3rd, clause 1st : 
' New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union ; 
but no New State shall be formed or erected within the juris- 
diction of any other State, without the consent of the Legis- 
latures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress' — 
2nd, ' The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make 
all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or 
other property belonging to the United States, and nothing in 
this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any 
claims of the United States or of any particular State' — Sec. 
2nd, clause 3rd, 'No person held to service or labor in one 
State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in 
consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged 
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim 
of the party to whom such service or labor may be due ;' " 
such a citizen may truly answer, in terms somewhat similar 
hereto. "When the power of the admission by Congress of 
new States into the Union was authorized by the Constitution, 
the only territory belonging to the Federal Government was 
that ceded by Virginia in 1784, called the North West Terri- 



42 

the matter at all, except by means of the Territorial Legisla- 
ture, which Congress under the Constitution authorizes them 
to elect — what species of political Legerdemain is this ? Does 
the gentleman consider the national intellect idiotic, and that 
we have lost all reverence for the founders of the true doctrine 
of Popular Sovereignty, to allow him thus to pilfer our 
birthright, and plunder and defile their wisdom ? Does he rank 
himself beside the colossal proportions of Thomas Jefferson ? 
Does he announce to this Nation that he has discovered what 
Jefferson lost ? Yery well, I proclaim, although it is amiable 
in Mr. Douglas to put inferentially Mr. Jefferson as a subaltern 
to himself, that such is my weakness, in accordance with the 
divine delicacy of the import of the classic lines (I implore 
the pardon of the Senator,) I would rather seem wrong with 
Mr. Jefferson than be right with Mr. Douglas. 

I have done. In the adopted State of the Senator, among 
other gifts conferred on her liberally by the hand of a genial 
nature, is a stream, either branch of which is lovely enough 
to adapt itself to my present purpose — so placid is its bosom, 
that the ingenuous youth of the country can safely float upon 
it in his tiny cock-boat, lingering around its islets, or drifting 
sportively along its fragrant banks — let the gentleman beware 
—the calm stream becomes occasionally, from cause, a heady 
and an angry current, rupturing those banks, and spreading 
into a wide waste of waters, to cross which in the leaky skiff 
that Mr. Douglas paddles, would be perilous — I warn him of 
his safety. 



Erratum. — In the dedication of this pamphlet, the word 
received," in the 5th line, should read revived. 



41 

terms "Popular Sovereignty," and the conclusion that men's 
minds would naturally run to, that, as it was insisted upon so 
strenuously by the Senator for the first time, it had no previous 
existence in either the theory or practise of the Government 
— this ruse has had its day — the self-complacency with which 
the gentleman has formerly stroked his chin at the ephemeral 
success of his project, has given way to the alarm that always 
follows the discovery of a little petty plot. The doctrine of 
Popular Sovereignty is the very germ of the Constitution, 
and the noble offspring of its founders and defenders, from the 
first hour of its existence to the present, and Mr. Douglas is 
as much entitled to any special part in the great principle, as 
a pirate is to a portion of the cargo he feloniously plunders, 
or to the inspiration of the author whose volume he publishes 
as his own — he not only robs the Constitution and the uniform 
line of Congressional action for upwards of half a century, of 
the doctrine, but the moment he gets it into his grasp, he 
emasculates it. Popular Sovereignty in the Territories was 
always exercised in its full proportions, manly and exalted as 
they are, until of late when Mr. Douglas takes hold of the 
magazine, and peddles out the principle in broken doses. 
When Congressional action was heretofore applied to a Territory, 
the voice of the Nation at large was heard on the subject, and 
every interest was consulted and defended — the pro-slavery 
interest especially, for that by the Constitution, the white man 
who owned a hundred negroes had sixty-one voices in Congress, 
whilst the white man who owned no negroes had only one — 
the slave owner, therefore, could not complain of his interest 
being neglected, when the national will, on the pure principle 
of Popular Sovereignty, was consulted and expressed in Con- 
gress, in legislating for the Territory — but beyond this, the 
uniform rule of that legislation from the admission of Ken- 
tucky in 1792 to the late auspicious times of Senator Calhoun 
and Douglas, was to confer upon the people of the Territories 
the right to elect their own Legislature, and thus secure a true 
representation of the will of the majority as to local or general 
interests — does the Senator want a better Popular Sovereignty 
Doctrine than this, being the doctrine of the founders? It 
appears he does, and let us see what it is : he vehemently 
exclaims, exclude the question of slavery in the Territories 
out of Congress, where the will of the people, the entire 
Nation, to whom the Territory belongs, can be alone heard, 
on the true principle of Popular Sovereignty, and let the 
people of the Territory settle the question for themselves, 
when they have no power under heaven to do so, or to touch 



36 

granted, in legal form, her Southwest territory to the shores of 
the Pacific — it is apparent herefrom what anticipations as to 
the admission of new States into the Union, the framers of 
the Constitution entertained — let us remember that what 
Virginia had already ceded in the Northwest, and what might 
be expected for similar cession in the Southwest, was a species 
of terra incognita, that the adventurous spirit of our people 
was comparatively unknown, and that the impetus which 
freedom gives a nation, to ascertain and vindicate its territorial 
rights, had, as yet, no scope of time to exert itself. The Con- 
stitution, then, embodied in this provision cases that have 
never yet occurred, and the assertion may be fairly ventured, 
that they never contemplated, as a body, the admission of 
new States by Congress into the Union out of any other 
territory than what then belonged to the original thirteen 
States — hence the reason why States or Territories are indis- 
criminately termed States, because they were or were of 
States. The purchase of Louisiana was not yet anticipated, 
nor the annexation of Texas, nor the conquest of Utah and 
California — Cuba was not yet yearned after — coupled with these 
impressive reasons, founded on surrounding facts, and apparent 
in the Constitutional language itself, the transitory existence 
of a Territory, to-day, a wilderness, to-morrow, the abode of 
the adventurous citizen, drawing to him, by the attractions of 
a virgin soil and a novel life, the very acme to many of 
the existence of a freeman, in a few years crowds of daring 
men, until their number reached the Congressional climax, 
when by natural and brief process this chrysalis condition was 
changed into the full grown existence of State life, the Con- 
stitution did not then define, nor was it needed to define with 
the same accuracy or scope of provision a political condition, 
that was normal and transient, which it was both needful and 
provident, it should with unerring care and in distinct language, 
adopt for a new State and a new Federal government, that 
was finally settled and was meant to be perpetual — hence, the 
limited and guarded sovereignty granted to the Federal Gov- 
ernment by the Constitution over the States that were 
and the States that were to be, the law defining, with 
rigid accuracy, positively and negatively, how far that 
sovereignty was to reach and where it was to cease — 
hence, too, the reservation to the States and the people 
of all the rights not granted to the Federal Government — and 
hence, also, the unlimited sovereign power, inherent in the 
General Government over the Territory, is untouched by 
any other restriction, if restriction it may be termed, and that 



35 

torj, a tract of country North-west of the River Ohio, indif- 
ferently denned as to "boundary, and a wilderness occupied by 
the savage Indian, with very sparse exceptions — undoubtedly 
it was anticipated, that as Virginia had ceded, so in like 
manner other States of the Union that owned surplus territory, 
with only nominal or fictitious possession of it, would follow 
her example and relinquish to the United States their 
Sovereignty therein — this is apparent from the further pro- 
vision in the same clause of the section, declaring that no new 
States shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any 
other State, nor any State be formed by the junction of two 
or more States or parts of States, without the consent of the 
Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Congress, 
being the mode adopted in the case of the Virginia cession, 
which was first passed by her Legislature, afterwards accepted 
and ordered to be recorded and enrolled among the Acts of 
the United States in Congress assembled — it is memorable 
here, however, that not a word is uttered as to the acquisition 
of Territory outside the limits of the United States, either 
populous or waste, filled with cities or with forests, that being 
a right inherent in the Nation — other things are also apparent 
from the language of this provision — that, for instance two 
States or parts of two States may be ceded as Territory to the 
General Government, for the reason in the first case, that the 
citizens of two small States may consider their condition 
would be benefited by a mutual union of both into one State 
of ample proportions," by the Constitutional process of first, a 
Territorial, next a new State existence, and in the second, for 
the reason that two States may consider, that each having a 
tract of country belonging to it, a profitless surplusage to 
itself, and too small for a State purpose, but each lying contiguous 
to the other, and furnishing sufficient dimensions for a State, 
maybe patriotically ceded to the United States, on the Virginia 
plan — no instance of a cession in the first mentioned case ever 
occurred, State prida very probably forbidding the merging 
of one State into another, under any circumstances, or even 
relinquishing a small tract of country, though excessive, as 
many of them could, for territorial purposes — herein is to be 
traced the conjectural opinion of the Convention in the matter 
of Territories, and the sources of their formation — no settled 
purpose or view, but merely anticipatory — North Carolina, 
however, in 1789, in compliance with the suggestion made in 
the Constitution, and in imitation of Virginia, from whom that 
suggestion was taken, and whounder the advice of the prophetic 
Jefferson, ceded before the adoption of the Constitution, 



37 

it is not more properly advisory, than what is to be found in 
the 2d clause of the 3rd section, conferring upon Congress the 

?ower, in the exercise of the National Sovereignty over the 
'erritories. "to dispose of and make all needful rules and 
regulations respecting them or other property belonging to the 
United States" — not denning what the rules and regulations 
were to be, with the same jealous care that, in the case of 
Federal and State Sovereignties, is observable, but requiring 
merely the agency of Congress in peculiarly adequate terms, 
and in true conformity to the different stage of political existence, 
to transact thus far the temporary and transient duties of the 
General Sovereignty in the Territories — the terms used, also, 
are of the most arbitrary import, as before observed, and 
plainly declare the different grade of political importance, 
in which the framers of the Constitution held the full grown 
rights of the Federal and State Sovereignties, and the infant 
tutelage of a Territory — there is nothing to be discovered in 
any degree of great importance being attached to these waste 
lands by the Nation in 1787, or in the fact that their political 
existence as Territories, if political existence it was to be, a 
matter then more of distant expectancy and hope, than of 
speedy or even approximate result, would be aught else than 
an organization non-essential and brief, to justify the Convention 
to make any reservations discriminating in favor of the 
Territories and against the unqualified Sovereignty of the 
Federal Government, on any subject of legislation either 
local or general — there is no special authority conferred upon 
the Federal Government by the agency of Congress to lay and 
collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to provide for 
organizing, arming and disciplining a militia, or other exalted 
Governmental Powers, and yet who will assert, that Congress 
the agent of the General Government, cannot exercise these 
powers in a Territory under the General Law — nor is there 
any special power granted to create a corporation or establish 
a ferry therein, and yet who denies the right of the agent 
Congress, or its sub-agent the Territorial Legislature, to pass 
such laws. There is nothing special legislatively given, and 
nothing special legislatively reserved in the Constitution in 
regard to the Territories, being the very reverse of the position 
of the Federal and State Governments, a proof irresistible 
that the legislative power of Congress over every subject 
matter of legislation, general or local, slavery inclusive, in the 
Territories, is the indisputable law of the Sovereignty. 

Supposing that the term "State" was indiscriminately used, 
and that it occasionlly meant Territory as applied to Territory 



38 

subsequently acquired, and not ceded by any of the original 
thirteen States, a very violent supposition, as put by Mr. 
Douglas, what was there in the condition of the existence of 
slavery in the Country in 1787, that would call for a special 
Constitutional reservation in its favor in the Territories, where 
it did not exist, when the institution, as it is now respectably 
called, was on the wane in the States where it did exist, and 
the limit of the importation of slaves, the source from which 
slavery was supplied, was even fixed in an Article signed in 
1774, by the Delegates from all the Colonies, thus early taking 
the first determined step towards its final dissolution — for the 
flag of slavery has varied its elevation considerably, both in 
Colonial and Independent America, sometimes raised highly, 
especialy in the Colonies, when even Virginia denounced it, 
and again in 1787, after the Independence of the Country, aye 
the Country itself was conquered from England, trailing in 
the dust, the patriots and pure men of the land with General 
Washington at the head, as at the head of every other 
National Good, taking prudent measures for freeing the people 
from this last cruel vestige of British avarice and power — is 
it compatible, that reservations were entertained and duly 
weighed in the minds of the Convention, in favor of a vicious 
and unpopular system, and its special protection in wide 
spread wastes, where no slave to serve nor master to claim 
service from him dwelt, at a time when every prospect of its 
speedy dissolution was clear, when very many of the States 
were on the eve of taking decisive action on it, when the 
intent of individual manumission was openly expressed, as a 
public example and a private duty, by those eminent men in 
numbers, whose word was a fiat, is it reasonable to push 
conjecture to such verges, that construction can discover in the 
Constitution, framed by these men, protection and exemption 
in the Territories, for this nearly obsolete system of social 
debasement, when the language of the great instrument itself 
is strictly silent thereon ; was a transient form of government 
ordained to possess permanent features, only in behalf of a 
dying system of social life, that was spurned by the Nation, 
not in the locality where it yet lingered, but where it was never 
yet introduced, and had very little prospect ever of a home ; 
was the Sovereignty of the Federal Government to be shorn 
of all its attributes in the Territories on the subject matter of 
slavery alone, when it exercised imperial sway without any 
Constitutional limit on every other subject matter of Legisla- 
tion, local or national — the conclusion which every dispassionate 
man will arrive at is, that the framers of the Constitution 



39 

taking no thought of slavery in the Territories, as they 
employed no language direct, granting to it freedom and 
reservation from Congressional action thereon, so did they not 
wrap up such intent in the plain and intelligible terms of the 
1st and 2d clauses of the 3rd Section of the 4th Article of the 
Constitution — and that the inherent right of Sovereignty in the 
Federal Government over the Territories, and of legislation 
by Congress on all matters therein, slavery included, is not 
impinged by these or any other clauses of the instrument, 
If Congress, Constitutionally, has the power of unlimited 
legislation in the Territories, the 3rd clause of the 2d Section 
of the 4th Article, respecting a fugitive from labor, is a very 
subordinate provision, out of which the ability or ingenuity 
of a Statesman or of any man, can evolve nothing of material 
import ; it is a provision of detail, in terms the most discreet, 
and simply guards, that if a person owes labor, he shall not 
successfully avoid the payment of the debt, by fleeing from 
the State where the debt is due, or by being discharged from 
its payment by force of the law of the State to which he 
escapes, but shall be delivered up — this is its extent and no 
more, the sanction by the Constitutional Law of an act of 
comity between sister States, wherein the debt of a citizen of 
one of them is involved, and which, from its rare and 
extraordinary . nature, being not money nor chatties of any 
kind, but the involuntary service of a human being, a laborer, 
to whom, however worthy, his hire is not paid, contrary to the 
doctrine of honesty, is capable of exit and escape, impelled by 
every instinct that drives us, and aided by the resources, how- 
ever limited, of the divine mind — it is an anomoly in the nature 
of claim, and so regarded by the Constitution in the terms 
that it employs, giving no precedence to that of the master in 
favor of slavery, over that of the slave in favor of freedom, 
for, among other things, the labor debt is to be first ascertained, 
and is a condition precedent to the delivery ; the interpretation 
that makes color presumptive evidence of slavery, and puts it 
to the proof of freedom or non-indebtedness of labor, is not 
patronized by the Constitution, but is one of these wolfish 
dogmas of the petty law, that its professors have in all time 
been prolific of inventing, with a few, very few honorable 
exceptions, who have sided with liberty ; the great majority, 
especially those eminent in rank, whether on or off the bench, 
being instinctively prone to aid and abet tyranny, and the 
ranker it is, the more ingenious and plausible the defences 
these men ever invent and surround it with. In the 3rd clause 
of the 2d Section, being the service or labor clause, no 



40 

encouragement or patronage is given in behalf of the expansion 
of slavery in the States even, and very scanty is the countenance 
it there receives to retain what it claimed — were it favored, 
instead of being shunned, were it treated as a just right, instead 
of a compulsory wrong, how differently would the Constitu- 
tional language declare itself — and least of all, can the faintest 
reference to slavery in the Territories or the application of the 
fugitive clause therein be traced — the provision, such as it is, 
made in the Constitution restricting and directing States, over 
which without this authority Congress could not afterwards 
act, was deemed needful, whereas in the Territories, that the 
Federal Government supremely ruled in virtue of its unre- 
stricted sovereignty, Congress could at any time enact provision 
on the subject of fugitive labor and its delivery." 

Eeasoning similar hereto, but more comprehensive and 
elaborate, always standing within the circle of the Constitution, 
could be advanced by an intelligent and disinterested citizen, 
as to the true import of these clauses — but such is the power 
of passionate clamor, raised and kept up by the seductive 
influence of the relation of master and slave, a love the more 
bewitching the more it is illegitimate and unholy, that the 
strained uses to which the plain language and import of the 
Constitution have been put of late, are regarded by certain 
men as no longer unnatural or dangerous — they are taken up 
and coolly converted in the study of the Statesman, and the 
chambers of the Judiciary — precedent has no force, and the 
uniform course of legislation prepared and presided over by 
Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison is slighted or belied by 
metaphysical and legal subtlety, or bullied with the raw 
dexterity of a western stump speech. Plow precipitately has 
Mr. Douglas not fallen from the sublime, when, in one of his 
vagaries in aid of this doctrine of Popular Sovereignty, he 
invented in its support the other new doctrine of Sovereignty 
in abeyance and in trust, a grand discovery, which places the 
gentleman, as a jurist, at the head of this or any other age, 
and which rebukes the wisdom of the Codes of all time — 
would it not be well, that he be permitted to take unto himself 
leisure and retirement, in order to perfect his treatise on the 
unknown doctrine of Sovereignty in Abeyance, and bequeath 
it to his country, a rarer inheritance than even any that may 
unfortunately befal her from his Chief Executive occupations. 

Mr. Douglas has announced his Doctrine of Popular 
Sovereignty in the Territories, as an invention of which he is 
the first discoverer, and for which he claims a patent from the 
people — he instinctively apprehended the plausibility of the 



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